Parisian Views

Finalist for the 1999 Kraszna-Krausz Book Award.

During the Second Empire (1852-1870), Baron Haussmann and Emperor Napoleon III reconstructed Paris into the “City of Light” we know today. The government and other public institutions commissioned many photographers—among them Charles Marville, Henri Le Secq, Edouard-Denis Baldus, and Gustave Le Gray—to record the old Parisian architecture and to document the demolition and reconstruction. In Parisian Views , Shelley Rice explores not only the literal connections between photography and the transformation of Paris but also the metaphorical ones. For like Haussmann and Napoleon III, the photographers forged a new visual image of the city. As they constructed their “views” of Paris, they imposed order on the architecture, vistas, and street life of a city-in-progress perceived from above and below, from the skies and the sewers, from the marketplace and the windows of passing trains.